Abstract
There is a growing awareness in the natural language processing community that metaphor is ubiquitous in language and thought, that it is not “rare” or “special,” and as such, ought best be accounted for within a general theory of meaning. The computing environment does not escape metaphor’s ubiquitous hold: it is, at all levels, metaphorical. Systems are being designed by a diverse array of individuals who come to the programming task with differing views of metaphorical meaning attribution. Thrown into the mix are users, who also exhibit such diversity. This paper presents the findings of a study that demonstrates that second language (L2) learners have difficulty understanding and producing L2 metaphor and argues that as agents step into and attempt to operate in diverse environments, they will encounter stumbling blocks in effectively interacting with the environment, other agents and humans if not equipped with adaptive communicative features.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Black, M.: Metaphor. In: Models and Metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York (1962) 25–47.
Bonvillain, N.: Noun Incorporation and Metaphor: Semantic Process in Akwesasne Mohawk. In: Anthropological Linguistics (1989) 31:3–4.
Brugman, C.: Story of Over. Indiana University Linguistics Club, Bloomington Indiana (1983).
Danesi, M.: Metaphorical Competence in Second Language Acquisition Research and Language Teaching: The Neglected Dimension. In: Alatis, J. (ed.): Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics. Georgetown University Press, Washington D.C. (1992).
Dirven, R.: Metaphor as a Basic Means for Extending the Lexicon.“ In: Wolf, P., Dirven, R. (eds.): The Ubiquity of Metaphor in Language and Thought, 85–119. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (1985).
Emantatian, M.: Metaphor and the Expression of Emotion: The Value of Cross-Cultural Perspectives. In: Metaphor and Symbolic Activity (1995) 10(3):163–182.
Gentner, D., France, I.M.: The Verb Mutability Effect: Studies of the Combinatorial Semantics of Nouns and Verbs. In: Small, S. (ed.): Lexical Ambiguity Resolution: Perspectives from Psycholinguistics, Neuropsychology and Artificial Intelligence. Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo (1988) 343–382.
Hayashi, C.: Dictionary of Japanese Usage Examples. Kyoikusha, Tokyo (1986).
Irujo, S.: Don’t Put your Leg in Your Mouth: Transfer in the Acquisition of Idioms in Second Language. In: TESOL Quarterly (1986) 20(2).
-:Steering Clear: Avoidance in the Production of Idioms. In: International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (1993).
Johnson, M. (ed.): Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (1981).
Lakoff, G., Johnson, M.: Metaphors We Live By. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1980).
Lane, D.M.: HyperStat Online http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/hyperstat/B131558.html;http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/hyperstat/B131018.html.
Martin, J.M.: A Computational Model of Metaphor Interpretation. Academic Press, San Diego (1990).
O’Neill-Brown, P.: A Computational Method for Understanding and Teaching Japanese Metaphor. Ph.D Dissertation. Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. (1998).
Reddy, M.J.: The Conduit Metaphor: A Case Frame of Conflict in our Language About Language. In: Ortony, A. (ed.): Metaphor and Thought. 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1993) 164–201.
Richards, I.A.: The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Oxford University Press, London (1936).
Sweetser, E.: From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1990).
Tanaka, S., Abe, H.: Conditions on Interlingual Semantic Transfer. In:On TESOL’ 84: A Brave New World for TESOL. Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Washington,D.C. (1985) 101–120.
Veale, T.: Literature Review at the Metaphor Home Page http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~tonyv/trinity/way.html;http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~tonyv/trinity/martin.html (1998).
Veronis, J., Ide, N.: Large Neural Networks for the Resolution of Ambiguity. In: Saint-Dizier, P. and Vegas, E. (eds.): Computational Lexical Semantics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1995) 251–269.
Way, E.C.: Knowledge Representation and Metaphor. Kluwer, Boston (1991).
Yu, N.: Metaphorical Expressions of Anger and Happiness in English and Chinese. In: Metaphor and Symbolic Activity. (1995) 10(2):73.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
O’Neill-Brown, P. (1999). When Agents Meet Cross-Cultural Metaphor: Can They Be Equipped to Parse and Generate It?. In: Nehaniv, C.L. (eds) Computation for Metaphors, Analogy, and Agents. CMAA 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1562. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48834-0_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48834-0_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-65959-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48834-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive